Built for eternity, second House of the Lord rises in the Sanpete Valley

Editor’s Note: The public will have an opportunity to see the temple during an open house scheduled through Sept. 19, excluding Sundays. The open house will be held from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, including Labor Day. Tours are free, and no reservations or tickets are required.

EPHRAIM—Ephraim now has a “House of the Lord” to call its own.

The Ephraim Utah Temple is ready for dedication, carrying into the future a vivid history that stretches back to settlement of the Sanpete Valley during the early years of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

As in all temples, there is an inscription on the front of the building saying, “The House of the Lord. Holiness to the Lord.”

The temple site was announced in 2021. The 9.16-acre property sits at 200 North and 400 East in Ephraim. Elder K. Brett Nattress, a general authority seventy and assistant executive director of the Temple Department of the church, who led a media tour of the temple Monday prior to its opening for public tours, said the temple would serve eight stakes with about 24,000 members.

The two-story building encompasses approximately 39,000 square feet and features two towers, one on the east and one on the west.

The exterior façade is Italian stone. The interior flooring is made from marble and stone imported from Iran, Turkey, Spain and Israel.

Just inside the entrance are four doors leading to various parts of the building. Embedded in a panel above each of the doors is a design representing one of the four motifs in the building: forget-me-not flowers, oxeye daisies, living water and wheat, with each carrying religious and local significance.

Numerous paintings throughout the temple depict scenes and subjects connected to the Sanpete Valley, including Fairview, Horseshoe Mountain, Milky Falls in Manti Canyon, Mt. Nebo, a pioneer family pulling a handcart through snow and a baptism in the 1800s in the Sanpitch River. Other paintings depict the Savior, such as one of Jesus with lambs.

Inside, the building contains a baptistry, dressing rooms, including a bride’s room; four 30-seat instruction rooms, three sealing rooms and a celestial room.

The Ephraim temple was built while the Manti temple underwent renovation. Both temples will be located within the boundaries of the Manti High School seminary.

For members of the church, a temple’s primary function is to provide sacred ordinances, including baptisms on behalf of the dead; endowment ceremonies in which members make certain covenants and receive knowledge and blessings; and sealings, in which church members are married or families are connected for eternity, according to Latter-day Saint beliefs.

That focus on eternal families was especially meaningful to Shawna Nattress, wife of Elder Nattress. During the media tour this week, Nattress became emotional in one of the sealing rooms as she reflected on being sealed to her husband  38 years ago and the comfort her beliefs brought her after she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.

“It’s hard to put it into words, but my mind just goes back to the day that me and my husband were sealed. It was 38 years ago,” she said.

While battling cancer, she said, “I remember looking over at my husband and saying, ‘I am so grateful that we were sealed in the temple for time and all eternity, because I know that this life won’t be the end. If I pass on before you, I will see you again, and I’ll get to be with my children forever.’ And for me, that gave me so much hope and joy in my life to know that I would be with my family forever, because that means everything to me.”

Elder Nattress, said the temple provides an opportunity for visitors to step away from the distractions of everyday life and focus on their relationship with Jesus Christ.

“Everything in the temple draws us to the Savior,” Nattress said. “As we come to the temple, we can feel more fully of his love and have a greater understanding of who we are as sons and daughters of God, and that there’s a purpose for us.

“We live in a pretty crazy world, and to be able to go in the temple and kind of reset and say, ‘OK, what’s most important?’ What’s most important is our standing with God and an understanding that he has a perfect plan for all of his children.”

Accompanying Elder Nattress during the media tour were Elder John A. McCune of the Utah Area Presidency and Elder Taylor G. Godoy of the Seventy.

Another speaker during the media tour was Kaystan Larsen, a lifelong Ephraim resident and Snow College student who recently returned from a mission in Tacoma, Wash. He is the son of Karl and Marci Larsen.

He said the living water motif was particularly meaningful because of its connection to both the Savior and life in the Sanpete Valley.

“I loved the living water. I feel like living water, you know, relying on Jesus Christ, and the symbolism of this valley, being dependent on water and being reliant on God providing that for us, where we don’t have a big reservoir to store water on good years” is particularly meaningful, Larsen said.

Larsen, who lives about a 5-minute walk from the temple, said people preparing to enter a temple for the first time should approach the experience with patience and pay attention to the feelings of peace they experience rather than expecting to immediately understand every aspect of the experience.

Thomas and Michelle Bailey, a Sanpete couple with pioneer roots, were called as president and matron of temple in December 2025.

At the time of his call, Bailey was a Sunday School teacher and temple sealer and previously served as president of the Nebraska Omaha Mission, a stake president, bishop and stake high council member.

Michelle Bailey was a Sunday School teacher and temple worker, and previously served as a mission president’s companion, stake Young Women president, ward Relief Society president, ward Young Women president and ward Primary president. Both were born in Mt. Pleasant.

Asked how the temple assignment has shaped the way he sees the community, Tom Bailey turned to the people who came before.

“I think that the temple is an honorable tribute to the faith of the early settlers and to the people who live here now,” he said. “The Lord wouldn’t place that temple in this valley if he didn’t already know the hearts and the capacity of the people that are here.”

He called the temple “a statement of how much Heavenly Father trusts the goodness of the people here” and a recognition of people who left foreign countries, settled in the valley and made homes here.

The Bailey family roots run through the larger pioneer story. Tom Bailey said his ancestry reaches back to England, where his great-great-grandfather joined the church after hearing its message. He said Michelle’s family story follows a similar pattern.

“Our lives have been shaped by the choices they made earlier,” he said. “We rest upon the decisions they made in a lot of cases and are grateful for them.”

Visitors will take a 45-minute walking tour and are encouraged to wear business casual clothing and comfortable walking shoes. The building is wheelchair accessible, but service animals are not permitted.

Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will preside over the temple dedication Oct. 11 at 10 a.m. The dedicatory session will be broadcast to all units within the temple district, with a rebroadcast scheduled for 2 p.m.